Rakesh Jhunjhunwala
Akasa Air, a new Indian airline backed by billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, plans to offer stock options to attract staff, using an incentive more often used by technology start-ups in its bid to gain a foothold in one of the world’s most competitive air-travel markets.
The airline, which is preparing to start flying in late May, is taking the unusual approach of granting company shares to a bigger pool of top employees, rather than a select group of senior executives.
“We want to have an organisation that is very tight knit in values but diverse in experiences, genders, locations within India,” chief executive Vinay Dube said. “We were saddened by the plight of employees through the pandemic, some of the bankruptcies that have taken place in Indian aviation and we wanted to create homes for them where they are happy.”
The degree to which Akasa Air plans to grant stock options for staff will be “far greater than most airlines in India and, hopefully, reminiscent of maybe some of the tech start-ups where they go fairly deep in the way they provide employee stock ownership plans”, Mr Dube said.
However, there is no suggestion stock options would be given to airline crew or regular pilots.
Akasa Air, backed by aviation veterans, has hired about 50 employees for back office functions and is now recruiting pilots, flight attendants and airport staff, said Mr Dube, who is also Akasa’s founder and managing director.
The careers page of Akasa’s website states that new applications have been paused after an “unprecedented number” of inquiries were received.
Mr Dube is optimistic his airline, with secure financing and a low cost-structure, can succeed where other Indian airlines have failed.
What gives us confidence is the way in which we have purchased our aircraft, established our long-term engine maintenance deals, the way in which we have started leasing our aircraft with the lessors
Vinay Dube,
founder and chief executive of Akasa Air
“What gives us confidence is the way in which we have purchased our aircraft, established our long-term engine maintenance deals, the way in which we have started leasing our aircraft with the lessors,” he said.
The leadership team Akasa has attracted is also “hyper-focused on the hundreds of elements that make up an airline’s cost structure”.
Akasa plans to grow at a breakneck pace, adding 18 aircraft during the year ending March 2023 — the first deliveries from a November order for 72 Boeing 737 Max jets worth $9 billion at sticker prices.
Akasa is on track to be well-capitalised, with a potential ability to raise $500 million through the sale and leaseback of its aircraft over five years, he said.
Mr Jhunjhunwala initially pumped $35m into the airline, which will begin flying internationally by the summer of 2023 when it inducts 20 aircraft, the minimum fleet requirement to serve overseas routes according to local regulations, Mr Dube said.
Akasa will have an option of flying to the Middle East, South-East Asia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, all within the range of a 737 Max.
MacKenzie Scott
MacKenzie Scott’s stake in Amazon shrunk by 2.5 million shares last year, according to a regulatory filing, as the world’s fifth-richest woman set records with the pace of her philanthropy.
Those shares would be worth as much as $8.5bn based on the average of Amazon’s share price between the dates of the two disclosures. The stake would total $7.3bn based on Amazon’s current $2,879.56 share price.
Ms Scott still holds 14.9 million shares, according to the filing. It details Jeff Bezos’s holdings, including stock that Ms Scott ended up with after their 2019 divorce and which Mr Bezos retains voting power over.
Currently, Ms Scott is worth $48.3bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. It would be considerably more but she has donated more than $8.6bn since their split to hundreds of charities across the US.
Ms Scott announces her donations in blog posts that explain her motives and concerns over inequality in society. In 2021, she gave at least $2.7bn, according to a June 2021 post. In a December post, she opted to keep the amount she gave secret.
Her philanthropy is overseen by her Seattle-based family office Lost Horse, although she uses the Bridgespan Group to pick and vet organisations.
Mr Bezos is the world’s second-richest person with a $168.9bn fortune.
Anil Agarwal
Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal is considering a potential merger of his commodity empire’s indebted holding company with cash-rich listed unit Vedanta, sources said.
The tycoon has held preliminary discussions with prospective advisers about the idea of combining his closely held Vedanta Resources with Mumbai-traded Vedanta, they said.
The potential deal follows a global commodities boom that has fuelled a rally in Vedanta shares and almost doubled its market capitalisation in the past year to about $17bn. Deliberations are still at an early stage and there is no certainty that Mr Agarwal will decide to pursue a transaction.
Mr Agarwal did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A representative for Vedanta said there is “no plan” to merge Vedanta Resources with Vedanta.
Vedanta Resources has already been raising its stake in its unit through an open offer and share purchases from the market after a failed takeover attempt. As of December, it owned about 70 per cent of Vedanta, up from about 50 per cent in October 2020. It had about $11.4bn in net debt as of September 30, according to a corporate presentation.
The holding company was the first Indian business to list in London back in 2003, before Mr Agarwal, 68, took it private 15 years later when his Volcan Investments bought out minority investors as part of efforts to streamline the group’s structure.
Vedanta Resources also owns a 79.4 per cent stake in Zambia’s Konkola Copper Mines, which has been under provisional liquidation since May 2019. The matter is still the subject of court cases and arbitration proceedings.
In December, Vedanta said that it intends to unlock value with options including separately listing its aluminium, iron and steel, and oil and gas businesses. The board has formed a panel to evaluate the plan, it said in a filing. The Press Trust of India reported last week that the company will outline details by the end of March.
Subsidiaries of Vedanta include Hindustan Zinc, Bharat Aluminium, Talwandi Sabo Power and Electrosteels Steel, according to the corporate presentation.
Mr Agarwal, a former scrap metals trader, rose to become a commodities magnate through a series of ambitious acquisitions. He has a net worth of about $3bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Mukesh Ambani
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s ambitious effort to pivot his conglomerate Reliance Industries towards green energy could transform India into a clean-hydrogen juggernaut.
Mr Ambani, Asia’s richest man, announced plans earlier this month to invest $75bn in renewables infrastructure, including generation plants, solar panels and electrolysers.
There is growing speculation that the strategy entails transforming all of that clean power into hydrogen, one of the largest endorsements in the next-generation fuel.
Reliance is expected to opt for hydrogen in a bid to avoid India’s wholesale electricity market, which is dominated by financially stressed utilities and plagued by delayed payments, analysts say.
“Reliance is preparing itself to capture the entire value chain of the green hydrogen economy,” said Gagan Sidhu, director of the Centre for Energy Finance at New Delhi-based think tank CEEW. “They clearly have seen the writing on the wall.”
Green hydrogen — made from water and clean electricity — is considered as crucial for the world’s emission-reduction goals, helping consumers and key industries such as steel transition to lower-carbon fuels.
Reliance is preparing itself to capture the entire value chain of the green hydrogen economy
Gagan Sidhu,
director at the Centre for Energy Finance at CEEW
While Reliance has not broken out how much will be devoted to hydrogen, the $75bn investment in clean energy is by far the biggest in the country. Other companies such as Adani Enterprises and state-run energy entities NTPC and Indian Oil have also outlined plans for green hydrogen.
A key challenge will be to produce it at a cheaper cost. Green hydrogen produced by renewables is far from competitive, compared to other fuels, costing about double the price of using coal, India’s main source of electricity generation.
Mr Ambani, who has a net worth of $90.2bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has vowed to produce green hydrogen at $1 per kilogram, a more than 60 per cent reduction from today’s costs.
“Reliance will aggressively pursue this target and achieve it well before the turn of this decade,” Mr Ambani said last year.
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
What vitamins do we know are beneficial for living in the UAE
Vitamin D: Highly relevant in the UAE due to limited sun exposure; supports bone health, immunity and mood.
Vitamin B12: Important for nerve health and energy production, especially for vegetarians, vegans and individuals with absorption issues.
Iron: Useful only when deficiency or anaemia is confirmed; helps reduce fatigue and support immunity.
Omega-3 (EPA/DHA): Supports heart health and reduces inflammation, especially for those who consume little fish.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
TEACHERS' PAY - WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Pay varies significantly depending on the school, its rating and the curriculum. Here's a rough guide as of January 2021:
- top end schools tend to pay Dh16,000-17,000 a month - plus a monthly housing allowance of up to Dh6,000. These tend to be British curriculum schools rated 'outstanding' or 'very good', followed by American schools
- average salary across curriculums and skill levels is about Dh10,000, recruiters say
- it is becoming more common for schools to provide accommodation, sometimes in an apartment block with other teachers, rather than hand teachers a cash housing allowance
- some strong performing schools have cut back on salaries since the pandemic began, sometimes offering Dh16,000 including the housing allowance, which reflects the slump in rental costs, and sheer demand for jobs
- maths and science teachers are most in demand and some schools will pay up to Dh3,000 more than other teachers in recognition of their technical skills
- at the other end of the market, teachers in some Indian schools, where fees are lower and competition among applicants is intense, can be paid as low as Dh3,000 per month
- in Indian schools, it has also become common for teachers to share residential accommodation, living in a block with colleagues
Learn more about Qasr Al Hosn
In 2013, The National's History Project went beyond the walls to see what life was like living in Abu Dhabi's fabled fort:
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Fly Etihad or Emirates from the UAE to Moscow from 2,763 return per person return including taxes.
Where to stay
Trips on the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian cost from US$16,995 (Dh62,414) per person, based on two sharing.
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The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
How to become a Boglehead
Bogleheads follow simple investing philosophies to build their wealth and live better lives. Just follow these steps.
• Spend less than you earn and save the rest. You can do this by earning more, or being frugal. Better still, do both.
• Invest early, invest often. It takes time to grow your wealth on the stock market. The sooner you begin, the better.
• Choose the right level of risk. Don't gamble by investing in get-rich-quick schemes or high-risk plays. Don't play it too safe, either, by leaving long-term savings in cash.
• Diversify. Do not keep all your eggs in one basket. Spread your money between different companies, sectors, markets and asset classes such as bonds and property.
• Keep charges low. The biggest drag on investment performance is all the charges you pay to advisers and active fund managers.
• Keep it simple. Complexity is your enemy. You can build a balanced, diversified portfolio with just a handful of ETFs.
• Forget timing the market. Nobody knows where share prices will go next, so don't try to second-guess them.
• Stick with it. Do not sell up in a market crash. Use the opportunity to invest more at the lower price.
Suggested picnic spots
Abu Dhabi
Umm Al Emarat Park
Yas Gateway Park
Delma Park
Al Bateen beach
Saadiyaat beach
The Corniche
Zayed Sports City
Dubai
Kite Beach
Zabeel Park
Al Nahda Pond Park
Mushrif Park
Safa Park
Al Mamzar Beach Park
Al Qudrah Lakes
The President's Cake
Director: Hasan Hadi
Starring: Baneen Ahmad Nayyef, Waheed Thabet Khreibat, Sajad Mohamad Qasem
Rating: 4/5
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Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
Terror attacks in Paris, November 13, 2015
- At 9.16pm, three suicide attackers killed one person outside the Atade de France during a foootball match between France and Germany
- At 9.25pm, three attackers opened fire on restaurants and cafes over 20 minutes, killing 39 people
- Shortly after 9.40pm, three other attackers launched a three-hour raid on the Bataclan, in which 1,500 people had gathered to watch a rock concert. In total, 90 people were killed
- Salah Abdeslam, the only survivor of the terrorists, did not directly participate in the attacks, thought to be due to a technical glitch in his suicide vest
- He fled to Belgium and was involved in attacks on Brussels in March 2016. He is serving a life sentence in France
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
PFA Team of the Year: David de Gea, Kyle Walker, Jan Vertonghen, Nicolas Otamendi, Marcos Alonso, David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Christian Eriksen, Harry Kane, Mohamed Salah, Sergio Aguero
Visit Abu Dhabi culinary team's top Emirati restaurants in Abu Dhabi
Yadoo’s House Restaurant & Cafe
For the karak and Yoodo's house platter with includes eggs, balaleet, khamir and chebab bread.
Golden Dallah
For the cappuccino, luqaimat and aseeda.
Al Mrzab Restaurant
For the shrimp murabian and Kuwaiti options including Kuwaiti machboos with kebab and spicy sauce.
Al Derwaza
For the fish hubul, regag bread, biryani and special seafood soup.
TO%20CATCH%20A%20KILLER
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Timeline
2012-2015
The company offers payments/bribes to win key contracts in the Middle East
May 2017
The UK SFO officially opens investigation into Petrofac’s use of agents, corruption, and potential bribery to secure contracts
September 2021
Petrofac pleads guilty to seven counts of failing to prevent bribery under the UK Bribery Act
October 2021
Court fines Petrofac £77 million for bribery. Former executive receives a two-year suspended sentence
December 2024
Petrofac enters into comprehensive restructuring to strengthen the financial position of the group
May 2025
The High Court of England and Wales approves the company’s restructuring plan
July 2025
The Court of Appeal issues a judgment challenging parts of the restructuring plan
August 2025
Petrofac issues a business update to execute the restructuring and confirms it will appeal the Court of Appeal decision
October 2025
Petrofac loses a major TenneT offshore wind contract worth €13 billion. Holding company files for administration in the UK. Petrofac delisted from the London Stock Exchange
November 2025
180 Petrofac employees laid off in the UAE
World Cricket League Division 2
In Windhoek, Namibia - Top two teams qualify for the World Cup Qualifier in Zimbabwe, which starts on March 4.
UAE fixtures
Thursday February 8, v Kenya; Friday February 9, v Canada; Sunday February 11, v Nepal; Monday February 12, v Oman; Wednesday February 14, v Namibia; Thursday February 15, final
